My friend’s child now is in her 30s. From the time she was little, she had rages. Not tantrums. Not hissy fits in the grocery store over candy denied. Rages.

She also had a lot of other medical problems, too, which kept her doctors busy.

However, doctors would tell this mother her child had behavior problems.

This sick child got one lucky break. She had parents who did not believe she was a bad child. They knew in their hearts she was a sick child. They never gave up on her.

Finally, in her 20s, she was correctly diagnosed as having bipolar disease and bulemia. At the time this child was growing up, no one thought about mental illness in children.

Now, the pendulum has swung the other way. It is fashionable to complain loudly about over-medicated children, parents who seek calming medication for little boys who are, well, noisy and highly active boys. Demons are identified, oddly enough, by parents on both ends of the political spectrum.

In reality, parents struggle with facing the reality that their child could have a mental illness. At best, it means a lifetime of hard work, careful management of medications (if any work) and a host of other challenges.

The writer of a new book, reviewed below, was a member of those who were convinced America was cramming too many pills down the throats of its children. Unlike many writers who begin a book with a strong premise, she found out she was wrong, changed course and wrote the real story.

The following is from a review of a new book on a hot topic—kids, medication and mental illness.

The book is titled, WE’VE GOT ISSUES: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication, by Judith Warner. The review is by Abigail Zuber, M.D., who writes regularly for the Times.

The New York Times

…“A couple of simple truths have become clear,” she writes with the passion of a new convert. “That the suffering of children with mental health issues (and their parents) is very real. That almost no parent takes the issue of psychiatric diagnosis lightly or rushes to ‘drug’ his or her child; and that responsible child psychiatrists don’t, either. And that many children’s lives are essentially saved by medication, particularly when it’s combined with evidence-based forms of therapy.” (Emphasis added)

“How could she have been so convinced otherwise? Half the book is rueful legwork devoted to answering that question.

“Ms. Warner points out that she was hardly alone in her previous assumptions: it is accepted wisdom in some circles, including, oddly, liberal-left “moms” and right-wing radio audiences, that the milder variants of attention deficit disorder, bipolar disorder and autism are just different ways of saying “normal, but not good enough.” (Emphasis added)

“Both groups share a disdain of parents who buy into those diagnoses, a horror of the medications used to treat them and a deep nostalgia for the simpler childhoods of past eras, when the child in question would definitely have been left alone.”

Source: New York Times, February 22, 2010

Source: WE’VE GOT ISSUES: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication. It is by Judith Warner. Riverhead Books. 320 pages. $25.95